In an enterprise environment there are multiple networked printers distributed across each floor. Those printers are generally accessible by all employees in the same group, or same building, or even in the whole company globally. In addition, employees can print to those printers from home via VPN, or from a remote office.
In one method to retrieve printouts securely, a user can manually input credentials. The user types an identification and password at the printer each time they want to print. This is unacceptable to most people due to time involved and complexity.
Another method is to print from a smartphone at a printer. However, the typical business scenario is to print from a computer where the employee can fully view and edit the documents. When the document is in or accessible from the smartphone, this exposes a serious security hole and may not be allowed in many companies. Even when allowed, the smartphone may need to be secure, which can be a challenge. Many document formats also may not be supported on smartphone or not fully supported as on a traditional computer. In an enterprise environment, the document may be encrypted, so the smartphone may not even be able to open the document to print. In many instances, the document may need to be edited before printing, which is difficult on smartphone.
In yet another method of retrieving a printout, an authentication card or keycard can be used to authenticate the user for the print job. In such a solution, a central printing server holds the document sent to printer, until the user swipes the authentication card at the printer. Once authenticated, the document will be transmitted to the selected printer for the actual job. However, the credentials on a card are static, which is not secure. In addition, the card can only perform a single task of authentication.